MDA Distilled: Principles of Model-Driven Architecture

Beyond UML

In the best of all possible worlds, no one writes software any more. Instead, users, not developers, describe desired behavior formally using a language specific to their subject matter. Control engineers, for example, would use control diagrams, while manufacturing plant operators would describe the desired sequence of operations to be carried out in a visual language of their own devising. Accountants would think accounting; lawyers would think about, well, their fees.

This vision does require users to have some abstraction capability. Just as today, such skills will likely be in short supply, but the level of the domain-specific language would be high enough that the semantic gap between domain concepts and the language would be ...